


Every Love I've Known In Comparison

by Jiksa



Category: BBC Radio 1 RPF, One Direction (Band), Taylor Swift (Musician)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Infidelity, M/M, Phone Call, Post-Break Up, Reputation!fic, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-04
Updated: 2017-12-04
Packaged: 2019-02-10 15:11:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12914523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jiksa/pseuds/Jiksa
Summary: His voicemail just says, shortly and without preamble,For fuck’s sake, Taylor. Call me back.





	Every Love I've Known In Comparison

**Author's Note:**

> I... listened to _Reputation_ with a bottle of rosé. This happened. Sorry.
> 
> Thanks to the loveliest [1000_directions](http://archiveofourown.org/users/1000_directions) for looking it over before posting. <333

Taylor’s been expecting him to call, and like clockwork, he does. _Reputation_ ’s not even out for another three weeks, but somehow, no matter how tight-lipped and careful she and her team are, he always manages to get his hands on an advance copy of anything she ever releases. 

She misses his first call, busy digging weeds out of the potted plants lining her window sills in New York while Johnny Cash sings _I keep a close watch on this heart of mine_. His voicemail just says, shortly and without preamble, _For fuck’s sake, Taylor. Call me back._

She finds herself strangely delighted by it, as she picks dirt from her nails later, this reminder that she still has some small power over him. That after all these years and all this heartache and all this drama, there are still parts of him that he hasn’t managed to close off to her.

She tries to call him back that night, but it rings out and she doesn’t leave a voicemail. She wonders briefly where he is, whether he’s in London or LA or somewhere else, if he’s on a stage somewhere _trying to remember how it feels to have a heartbeat_. She could do some detective work, snoop around on twitter or ask someone to find out for her, but it feels like too much of an investment. She’s not that desperate anymore.

Her days of chasing after Harry Styles are long, long gone.

It takes them another day to link up, in the end, and when the call connects he sounds just as irritated as he did on his voicemail. “Taylor.”

“Harry,” she says, unable to keep the smirk out of her voice. She wishes she was wearing lipstick and stilettos for this. “Long time.”

He sighs in response. “You have to stop doing this. Every fucking record. It’s getting old.”

Someone taught her the German word for that feeling she gets in her belly when he says it. It fills her with a smug, petty joy that he still notices, that he still cares, that he can still follow every breadcrumb she ever leaves him. That something in him still remembers something in her, that it still upsets him enough to pick up the phone every single time. _Schadenfreude_ , she thinks, pleasure in another’s misery.

“I write about whatever inspires me, Harry. You’re a musician, you get that.”

“Isn’t it high time you stopped being inspired by a fumbled, barely-there relationship that ended years ago? Surely you’ve had some life experiences since then. The Internet would certainly suggest so.”

Taylor presses her lips together. She will not be slut-shamed by Harry Styles, of all people. She will not let him get the upper hand, she will not lose her temper. Dryly, she says, “Ooh, low blow. You’re one to talk.”

Ed had warned her about his song before it came out, but it still left her shaking on her bathroom floor the first time she heard it. It still made her furious, still made her cry. It still made her pick up her guitar and write, _If he’s a ghost, then, I can be a phantom, holding him for ransom_.

“One song,” Harry says, “and it wasn’t unkind to you in the slightest.”

“Two songs,” Taylor corrects impatiently. “Or did you forget the one where you and your boys made fun of my break-up songs and made it look like all we did was parade in front of paps and fuck in hotel rooms?”

Harry sighs loudly, but he doesn’t rise to the bait. That song wasn’t fair to her, but she can’t really fault him for it. He’s fucked her in enough hotel rooms over the years, kindly and gently and behind everyone else’s backs, to know it wasn’t ever just about _causing trouble_. “We were kids, Tay,” he says. “I get that I hurt you back then, but it’s time to let it go.”

He says it like he isn’t still a kid, like he isn’t just 23 and still unable to grow proper chest hair. He says it like he didn’t fuck her into a hotel mattress barely a year ago, like his hipbones didn’t leave bruises on the inside of her thighs, like he didn’t fan his fingers out across her cheek and squeeze his eyes shut as he kissed her. He says it like he doesn’t know how much it still hurts her that he falls in and out of her bed whenever he pleases. “I like to play with stories and symbols and memory. It’s not _actually_ about you.”

“Fuck off it’s not about me. _Younger than my exes? Island breeze and lights down low? Wonder how many girls he’s loved and left haunted? If he’s a ghost, then—_ ”

“It’s about you the same way _Perfect_ or _Two Ghosts_ are about me,” she snaps. “Rewritings of history, playing with memories, fiction vaguely based on things I’ve experienced. We’re both musicians. This is business.”

Harry lets out a shaky exhale. He sounds a bit more controlled after, chastened, like he’s belatedly remembered he’s not entirely innocent in all of this. “Fine. It’s all just business for you, I get it. No one gets the upper hand over Taylor Swift™. Business.”

“Oh, don’t act so fucking superior.”

“Is it too much to ask, though, that you stop spreading _my business_ all over the world, over and over and over again? It’s been years. We’re over. We’re mates. You have to let it go.”

Taylor feels the hair stick up on the back of her neck. She’s not going to let him claim the higher ground here. “I have let it go,” she says. “You’re such a fucking narcissist, of course you’d think every goddamn song I write is about you.”

“Calm down, Carly Simon.”

“Oh, that’s sweet, Haz. Real sweet.”

“Look, I’ve—” Harry stops himself, like he’s hesitating or choosing his words carefully. “I’ve kept my mouth shut about all of this. When you made it look like I was some sort of callous, womanizing asshole that played you and left you cold — I didn’t defend myself. I still haven’t said a single bad word about you. But this needs to stop.”

Anger flashes in her, and before she can stop herself, she snaps, “How’s Nick, Harry?”

There’s a long, horrible pause. She can picture the look on Harry’s face and the pink blooming in his cheeks; can almost taste the schadenfreude in her own mouth. There’s nothing she does better than revenge, after all. “What do you mean, how’s Nick?”

She lets her voice go slow and sweet. “I mean, how’s Nick.”

“Are you threatening me?”

“Of course I’m not threatening you, Harry. That would sound like, _How’s the man you fucked behind my back, that I still haven’t written a fucking song about?_ That’s what threatening might sound like.”

She hears Harry’s breath falter. This is his weak spot, she knows that, the chink in his armor, the place he’s the most vulnerable, the one place he doesn’t let things just peel off of him. “Nick is fine. Nick is always fine.”

“You tell him you’re in love with him yet?”

“Not really any of your business, that, is it.”

She probably shouldn’t be surprised, but she is. “So that’s a no, then.”

“Taylor,” he says, with a small crack in his voice. “This isn’t— I— I need to know if— if you’re going to backtrack on your promise to keep quiet about him. I need to know.”

It would be _so fucking easy_ , is the thing. She squeezes her eyes shut and breathes into the receiver. “I won’t,” she says. “I won’t. I couldn’t. I'm sorry.”

It doesn’t stop her from writing about it though, words she reworks before they ever become demos or records. Even on this record, the first version of _Delicate_ held the line, _does the boy back home touch you like I do?_ She’d written it while Harry dozed in the other room, after her life and reputation had fallen apart he’d dropped everything to make sure she was okay. She’d been foolish to think he’d meant anything by it; he never does, but she never learns. She’d scratched out the lyrics with a ballpoint pen after he’d gotten on a plane, replacing them with _the girls back home_ and changing _green_ to _blue_.

“I trust you,” he says, earnest as anything. Everything in her chest clenches tight, all her sharp edges wilting. “You have to know I trust you.”

She swallows thickly, feeling significantly less red lips and stilettos, and more chapstick and slippers. She misses him and she hates it. After all this time and all this heartache and all this drama, he’s still the one boy she can’t get out of her head. “I’m in London next month.”

“Taylor."

“We can cause some trouble in a hotel room, if you’d like.” She tries to keep her voice light, but she knows hears it. Like he always hears it, every time, and yet never brings it up. Like he heard _Ready For It_ and still hasn’t said a word about _In the middle of the night, in my dreams, you should see the things we do, baby_. “Somewhere quiet.”

“We’re not doing this again,” he murmurs. “This isn't actually a good idea.”

“Why not? We’ve done it a million times before.”

The rub is it wasn’t just that one fumbled, barely-there relationship that barely lasted a year. It’s been falling in and out of each other’s beds since, him fingering her in the toilet of any after-party they’ve found themselves at, him glancing at her all night even when Kendall was on his arm. It’s the way he sunk his hooks into her and never quite let her go. The way she wanted him, and he wanted Nick, and how sometimes they both conveniently forget that Harry doesn’t actually want her back.

It’s how she tries to play the victim in this, and he tries to play the victim in this, how the truth is there are no victims, only two fools playing a game rigged against them.

“He’s with someone else,” Harry mutters. His voice is muffled, like he’s rubbing a hand over his face. He sounds tired now, his earlier anger faded. “He’s happy, I think. I don’t know, it kills me.”

Taylor doesn’t know what to say. They’ll talk, once their clothes are on the floor and they’re too sore to go another round, after Harry’s opened a second bottle of wine and she’s peeled them another orange to eat in bed. He’ll tell her then. “London, then.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Harry says weakly. “You’re with someone, aren’t you?”

“So?” she says, hoping he can’t hear the tremor in her voice. “Like that’s ever stopped you before.”

Harry clears his throat, then sighs and caves. “Let me know when you get in.”

**Author's Note:**

> [tumblr post](http://jiksax.tumblr.com/post/168196194519/fic-every-love-ive-known-in-comparison)
> 
> Title from ["Ready For It" by Taylor Swift](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIft-t-MQuE). Other songs mentioned, ["Perfect" by One Direction](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ho32Oh6b4jc) and ["Two Ghosts" by Harry Styles](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suNBBjPdkhA).


End file.
